Vexed

Vexed episode 1.3 review

Here's my problem with Vexed in a nutshell: it wants to have a compelling will-they-won't-they flavour amid the sleuthing, but Jack (Toby Stephens) and Kate (Lucy Punch) have no real chemistry.

Jack and Kate continue to fight crime with the sheer force of their sexual chemistry. Her husband wants to move back to Bristol and his ball has a suspicious lump so they're both finding it hard to concentrate, and this week they're on the trail of a missing pop star. Features extended and gratuitous sequences of Kate running in tiny shorts. But then there's also a naked Toby Stephens to even things up. Really good fun.

Vexed: Comedy vs. Drama?

What defines a show as a comedy drama? The reason for my trepidation is that this question is fraught with difficulties.

I don't know what to make of Vexed. At first I only saw its faults. But then, thinking about the wider context of odd-couple comedy dramas - as wide as a krill net, this - I thought, well, at least writer Howard Overman is trying something different. It's not every Sunday night you see detectives ignoring the corpse bleeding on the rug to admire the cornice work.

Scenes like that one will probably have made some of the Sunday night constituency very vexed indeed. But an older audience must surely remember when all crime series were this politically incorrect, and when the central characters were sexist and made anti-gay jokes. Maybe Vexed owes a debt to Life On Mars but it's still remarkable that Jack Armstrong (Toby Stephens) is cracking gags about cancer sufferers, given all the post-Sachsgate rules and regulations. It's as if Vexed has slipped through a hole in the fence during a sentry shift-change at the BBC Trust.

Now five police forces are chasing it round the schedules, turning it into an unlikely recipient for public sympathy.

On balance, I probably want Vexed to be caught before its scheduled end but not before we find out whether Armstrong and fellow DI, the equally self-obsessed Kate Bishop (Lucy Punch) tumble into bed together; because, let's face it, that's why we watch these shows in the first place.

"So, let me guess - obesity and OCD right?" "She's a cleaner." Jack Armstrong (Toby Stephens) bulldozes through tonight's case set in a Priory-style rehab clinic with all the charm of an 80s cop who's found himself on duty in 2010 - a kind of posh, reverse Gene Hunt. It feels slightly stretched to fill an hour, but there's a lot to enjoy here, especially Kate's (Lucy Punch) awkward marriage counselling session.

Vexed episode 1.2 review

Whatever glints of promise that caught my eye last week vanished during Vexed's second hour.

"So, let me guess - obesity and OCD right?" "She's a cleaner." Jack Armstrong (Toby Stephens) bulldozes through tonight's case set in a Priory-style rehab clinic with all the charm of an 80s cop who's found himself on duty in 2010 - a kind of posh, reverse Gene Hunt. It feels slightly stretched to fill an hour, but there's a lot to enjoy here, especially Kate's (Lucy Punch) awkward marriage counselling session.

Vexed, BBC Two, review

August is the cruellest month for a TV critic: barren and empty. Most of us are outside in the sun and the canny people who make TV know it. So you can imagine my relief when the promising-sounding Vexed (BBC Two, Sunday), a new three-part comedy drama about a detective duo, appeared in the schedules.

The second slice of this jaunty comedy drama about a flirtatious detective duo. While Jack (Toby Stephens) and Kate (Lucy Punch) investigate the attempted murder of a big-money banker by car bomb, he's distracted by nosiness about her love-life and she tries to keep her marriage counselling sessions secret. It's an attempt at a modern-day Moonlighting and for that to work, the leads need to have genuine chemistry. Sadly, these two don't, meaning their banter grates rather than fizzes.

Vexed: bad beyond belief

Vexed is one of the worst things I have ever seen on television that wasn't part of a news report.